Renaissance
by E.Stevens
Summary: Work In Progress: A series of mini-fics set around the Season 4 finale and the aftermath of Booth's operation. Booth/Brennan.
1. I

_Just a small two-shot set around the season four finale. Trying to work up some inspiration! Thank you for reading, as always! Reviews and criticism welcome._

_**DISCLAIMER:** I don't own Bones!_

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**I**

How small it is.

These four walls, this room.

The steady punctuation of his heartbeat, alive.

Footsteps and squeaking trolley wheels: so constant now she barely notices them. The wires and tubes blot out his face and his hand is in hers before he realises it belongs there.

Her eyes are weighted by shadow and sleep ebbs and flows, never lasting long enough to bring rest or release. There has been no reprieve these past few days: she spills over onto her keyboard achingly, uncontrollably.

It begins, a slow burning in the pit of her being and grows with vigilance. She studies his eyes, his nose, his lips.. his heart. She knows him, and words and feelings heap up in a pile that she can no longer swallow. The idea of everything, so incomprehensible that she feels her chest tighten in desperation.

"Wake up!" she chastises him, "Please," she begs him.

He was stubborn before, but now with hours seeping into days and hope overflowing, then melting away she's so confused. Something ungiven being slowly absorbed, a testament to the nothing that it is and was - and she fears - will remain.

* * *

Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!

Her computer is tossed aside, for the cool clay and bitter wind of another mass grave. Sweat pools at the back of neck and the clouds nip at her shoulders as she brushes the soil bare. The darkest of secrets will never be hidden forever.

She beckons her companion over, a gesture so mechanical that realisation only hits when he bumps her shoulder. Her mind and her heart are miles away and the emptiness casts a mould around her that leaves her breathless.

The call of home has arisen unexpectedly within her and she dampens it by sinking her hands and feet into the dirt, ignoring the goosebumps that speckle her flesh and the washed out sunset of another penitential day.

Her world has wound around itself and she is no longer sure whether she is beginning or ending or just existing. When she closes her eyes and when she opens them she sees his eyelashes beating like butterfly wings and she is so very certain that she has found everything.

She has never been so badly wrong before and distance mocks the aching in her chest.


	2. II

_So.. I lied. This will be more than a two shot. Many thanks for the lovely reviews and comments. I haven't forgotten about my other story :) Happy new year!_

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**II.**

The sunrise signals another day, lapping at the angle of her jaw bone as her eyes flutter open. She's spent the night outside again, balancing her feet against a small heap of logs and her back flush against the grass.

The smell of cooking turns her stomach slightly, and she rolls over, hauling herself upright.

All around her the dig has resumed in earnest and she feels so small, consumed. Before, she would have been in the thick of things, but her mind has wandered to him. Then - if he knows she's away; or not. She has never gone from somebody to nobody in the space of one sentence before. It tears her open.

An outstretched hand offers her a cup of water, as breakfast grits her mouth and scratches her throat. Somewhere, in the haze of things, she finds that she has stood up and wandered over to the director and it takes little reassurance from her to let him know that he has everything under control and that her services are not required on site - but he is welcome to send anything on to the Jeffersonian should he wish to.

The grass bends to avoid her and the sun tickles her back as she gathers her belongings together and crunches her way through the undergrowth. Home.

She does not look back.

* * *

Her mind returns to her as they begin the descent into Dulles. The journey itself is fraught with blackness and she swallows it deeply, although the feelings of despair and guilt never quite subside and the fear glues her to her seat for ten minutes after landing. She is not afraid of Booth. She is afraid of who she is when she is around him, how he has permeated every aspect of her life without her noticing.

Nobody meets her at arrivals because nobody knows she has arrived. For the first time since she ran from his hospital room she feels free, the eyes of the discontented, sympathetic world not staring at her. Her heart flutters, atrial appendages buzzing against pericardial sac, the feeling visceral and raw, choking her from the inside out. Her movements are sharp and uncontrolled as she heads outside to hail a cab.

Anticipation claws at her stomach as she wipes the mist from the window. People and raindrops and a world fast falling away from her. She feels fifteen and forgotten all over again. There is no explanation for what he has done to her; how opening her up to the world has left her withered from exposure.

Her centre is missing.

Hands cup her face and the cold bites her nailbeds. She catches fragments of herself in nearby windows and realises that she is truly falling apart. Her feet ache, but she wanders, scattering herself along the kerbside.

Pieces and pieces and pieces.


	3. III

_Third add on. Feedback and criticism adored and welcome as always._

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**III**

She cries out for him in her heart, because her head won't let her speak. She longs for the days when work and home were four letter substitutions for the same thing because maybe, maybe it wouldn't hurt so much.

It takes three days without sunlight for her to find herself by the ward clerk. It's five am and the cold has exposed the rawness of another bitter morning. The corridors are deserted and she traces the artwork with her eyes, every down-turned mouth and outstretched hand.

The news of his discharge causes her breath to catch momentarily and a deep shame flushes her frame, pinning her steadfastly to the ground. From all angles, images of him in pain and alone pierce her vision as synapses race to connect, forming spaghetti junctions, white lines and glaring light:

A nearby toilet yields a sudden reprieve and she collapses into a stall, the weight of her selfishness bringing the first wave of tears since this nightmare began. She rests her palm against the white tiles and spent, shuts her eyes against the floor.

He would have taken care of her.

()()()()()()()()()()()()

Slowly the world comes into focus, clinical and unsympathetic. Cold. Her teeth clamour together furiously and her shaking body refuses her attempts to stand. She raises a hand to her cheek rubbing in a vain attempt to soothe the tear-tightened skin and pulls herself upright.

She shivers at the thought of wanting him and aches at the thought of deserting him.

A stranger not only to him, but to herself. The light, it hurts her eyes.


End file.
